Nora Batty to taste the Summer Wine again

Dec 3 2001 By Karen Grattage, The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

NORA BATTY is on her way back to Last of the Summer Wine. Actress Kathy Staff, who plays wrinkled-stockinged Nora, quit the long-running BBC TV comedy series last year after 28 years in the role.

But now Kathy, who left the programme to play cleaner Doris Luke in ITV's Crossroads, wants to rejoin the Summer Wine cast. It is hoped she will be back filming next year for a new series to be shown in 2003.

Kathy, 72, said today: "I have missed the series and I would be glad to come back to Holmfirth."

Kathy left the award-winning series after the death of Bill Owen, who played Compo, her persistent but shunned suitor.

She felt there was no longer a place for Nora in the programme, which now features Owen's son Tom as Compo's long-lost son.

But Summer Wine writer Roy Clarke kept a place for Nora, saying: "I won't kill her off, I'll leave the door open for her to come back."

There have even been hints of a new romance for curler-wearing Nora in the new series.

BBC producer Alan Bell said: "Roy Clarke met Kathy at the Woman of the Year Awards in Yorkshire. They had a chat and he said it would be great if she could come back."

He added: ``I never really thought that she would leave the series. We didn't even write her out, we just didn't show her house any more."

Kathy Staff confirmed she would leave Crossroads, which is made by Carlton, to go back to Last of the Summer Wine.

Kathy said: "I missed the last series because I was in Crossroads. It was a full-time job filming in Nottingham."

She said she was in negotiations over her return to Summer Wine.

"They have already done one series without me, which will be shown this year. I don't know the official details - but if I go back next year it will probably be shown in 2003," she said.

Last of the Summer Wine is the nation's longest-running TV comedy and attracts up to eight million viewers.